If you read The Sydney Morning Herald, you may have spotted the ad yesterday.
Featuring the tagline ‘You deserve to know’, the full-page colour ad links to a website that purports to deliver stories on ‘Neglect in aged care’.
However, two out of the four featured stories are actually about its investigation into retirement villages following the ABC’s 2017 program on Aveo – not recent news from the Commission.
See them here.
The clear focus for the media this week was the family of Bob Spriggs, a resident who suffered mistreatment at the hands of Oakden staff in 2016. Mr Spriggs’ story is often described as the ‘ground zero’ of the Royal Commission.
The major outlets – The Herald, A Current Affair, NINE, SBS and Channel 10 Eyewitness News – as well as most local papers – all covered the Spriggs’ experience, most using the same moment from Barbara Spriggs’ statement in which she became emotional when speaking about her husband.
Mrs Spriggs and her son Clive delivered their statements to Commissioners with great courage and grace and maintained their cool under pressure as the TV crew from A Current Affair hounded them down the street when the family left the hearing on Monday afternoon.
ACA’s evening news program then went on to run a six-minute package titled ‘Aged Care Crisis’ that featured a string of cases of abuse and neglect – including the Spriggs’ story. ACA did not cover any of the other major talking points from the Commission’s first day.
Watch their coverage here.
Unsurprisingly, the ABC led the coverage with three journalists and a camera crew at the hearings, plus a live blog of the events as they unfolded.
But it wasn’t all bad news.
2GB, Channel 10’s The Project and The Australian all ran with pieces that discussed “solutions” rather than just “problems”.
2GB’s Steve Price’s interview with National Seniors CEO Ian Henschke is particularly worth a listen.
Check it out here.
